OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Linux to Use Windows Drivers via Wrappers?

Submitted by Prakash Shetty 2003-10-19 Linux 66 Comments

"DriverLoader", created by Linuxant Inc, is a revolutionary "compatibility wrapper" allowing standard Windows NDIS 5.0 drivers (the network driver standard used by Windows and on an earlier spec revision by OS/2 too) as shipped by hardware vendors for windows users to be used as-is on Linux x86.

Linux vs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD Scalability Compared

Submitted by Bascule 2003-10-19 Benchmarks 81 Comments

These benchmarks are the result of a scalable network programming research. The interest in this area is to see how scalable and fast network applications can be on standard PC hardware. Linux 2.4/2.6 is compared to BSDs. Read the accompanied PDF paper here.

Libranet to Ark Linux: An Experiment in Migration

Submitted by LPH 2003-10-19 Linux 13 Comments

Libranet to ArkLinux: 'An experiment in migrating from one distro to another' can be found at TuxReports.

24 bit PNG Icons Patch for Classic AmigaOS 3.5/3.9

Mike Bouma 2003-10-19 Amiga & AROS 20 Comments

Elena Novaretti has released a small patch for version 3.5 and 3.9 of AmigaOS adding transparent support for 24-bit PNG icons and alpha channel transparency. Comparison workbench screenshots: 256 color classic icons and 24-bit PNG icons with the patch installed.

Slackware 9.1: Rebuilding the Kernel

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-19 Slackware, Slax 13 Comments

This article covers the type of path you would take to get Slackware 9.1 running and customized for a special kernel build. It gives you an idea of things you will need to address, but is by no means an authorative tome on tweaking your Slackware installation. Read our review of the new Slackware here.

An Introduction to J2EE Security

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-19 Java 2 Comments

Java is designed for secure development and deployment. It is often said that security is incorporated in Java from the ground up and not added as an afterthought. This article is excerpted from the newly published book "J2EE Security for Servlets, EJB's, and Web Services".

FreeBSD 4.9-RC3 for i386, Alpha Now Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 FreeBSD 10 Comments

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely says that a number of the issues brought up with FreeBSD 4.9 RC2 have been resolved, and the latest release candidate (RC3) is now available for i386.

Palm’s Nagel Risks SEC Wrath with OS Claims

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Wireless 5 Comments

PalmSource's CEO David Nagel faces questions about his claims that the company is in talks to license PalmOS to SonyEricsson. The handset manufacturer has flatly denied any such talks are taking place. SonyEricsson would represent a major win for Nagel's PalmSource licensing operation.

Red Hat’s Fedora Test 3 Review

Submitted by Rob 2003-10-18 Fedora Core 53 Comments

LinuxElectrons.com is reviewing Red Hat's Fedora Test-3. Screenshots included.

SuSE Linux 9.0 Live CD Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 SuSE, openSUSE 34 Comments

SuSE has updated their site with features of the new SuSE Linux 9.0. Additionally, they released a Live CD based on the 9.0 version (it's the RC-1). Mirrors here.

Solaris x86 Resurgent, Sun’s Side of the Story

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Solaris 16 Comments

"Several weeks ago, we cocked a collective eyebrow at Sun. When executive VP Jonathan Schwartz said "we do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period," we didn't have much of a choice. Our read on the statement was that it was more than a little hyperbolic, perhaps fueled by bitterness at Linux making lunch meat of Solaris x86." Read the article at ServerWatch.

ARM Port Xscale Optimizations on NetBSD; AMD64 Crossbuilding

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 NetBSD 11 Comments

NetBSD's Steve Woodford announces that he has committed various Xscale micro-optimizations to the NetBSD/arm ports. NetBSD/arm is a collective term for NetBSD running on systems based on ARM Ltd's ARM architecture. Also, NetBSD's Frank van der Linden announced that he has added gdb support to the tree, as a result the NetBSD/amd64 port is now completely crossbuildable. NetBSD/amd64 is a port to the AMD64 family of processors.

OpenBSD-Current: High Availability and Load Balancing

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 OpenBSD 1 Comment

An excellent feature has just been committed to OpenBSD-current : pfsync and now CARP. OpenBSD now adds high availability to security. In the meantime, the OpenBSD 3.4 CDs have begin to ship.

Sun Gives Glimpse of Revised Solaris TCP/IP Stack

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Solaris 33 Comments

Sun Microsystems' new Software Express program is alive and kicking with the company delivering a rewritten TCP/IP stack for Solaris that is meant to prepare customers for faster networking technology.

Iyonix DVD video playback for Risc OS

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 RISC OS 8 Comments

The team that brought RISC OS Aemulor has another killer app this autumn for the Risc OS users - Cino: The Iyonix DVD player. Read more Risc OS news at Drobe and IconBar.

Linux: 2.6.0-test8 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Linux 21 Comments

Linux creator Linus Torvalds released 2.6.0-test8. He listed the most noticeable changes as fixes for: the '/proc/PID/stat' oops, the Athlong prefetch bug causing occasional spurious page faults, serverworks PIO autotuning, cpufreguency calculations and NFS O_DIRECT. Read the changelog at KernelTrap.

Software Engineers – the Ultimate Brain Scientists?

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Geek stuff 31 Comments

"The most famous engineering brain models are "Neural Networks" and "Parallel Distributed Processing." Unfortunately both have failed as engineering models and as brain models, because they make certain assumptions about what a brain should look like." Read the article at TheRegister.

GCC 3.3.2 Released; Ported to WinCE

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-17 General Development 12 Comments

GCC 3.3.2 includes numerous new features, improvements, bug fixes, and other changes. Grab it here. Additionally, this interview at WindowsForDevices is with a young Russian programmer who earlier this year launched a project to port the open source GCC C/C++ compiler and supporting tools (library, manager, linker, etc.) to Windows CE and the Pocket PC platform.

Cinebench Benchmarks: Intel, AMD Vs G5 2GHz MP

Submitted by Kelly McNeill 2003-10-17 Benchmarks 62 Comments

BareFeats has compiled the results of a comparative test utilizing Cinebenc, the best cross-platform benchmarking application the market has to offer.It is interesting to see how the MP 2GHz Opteron and Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz MT compared against the MP 2GHz G5. Here is also a previous benchmark session at Barefeats which was updated recently.

On Longhorn’s Long Delays

Guest post by John O\'Sullivan 2003-10-17 Editorial 78 Comments

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981. "64 bit is coming to desktops,there is no doubt about that, But apart from Photoshop, I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory, which is what you have to have in order to benefit from this technology." It seems to me that by the time it ships, Longhorn will need 4 gigs of RAM.